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MLB The Show 18
Summary MLB The Show 18 is the latest edition in Sony's famous MLB The Show Baseball series. Story Major League Baseball's 30 teams face off against each other for the coveted World Series title. Game Modes Play Now Play one MLB game with any of the 30 Major League teams Franchise Mode Choose from any of MLB's 30 teams and not just play through a season, but also make the righrt decisions and make roster moves that would benefit your team. Road to The Show Create your own player and build him up through the minors so he can get called up to the majors in this mode. Diamond Dynasty Build your own team and use the baseball cards to use as players and you can play either solo or online in this mode. Retro Mode Play a game in the style of the old school video games in this mode. There are many option modes where you can adjust the game's difficulty or modify certain game modes. You can even change the rotsers of the 30 MLB teams in this game as well. Johnny's Review General Thoughts I covered this in a previous blog about some of the aspects of this game, some I did like, some I didn't like and some I would like to see. Now, here is a review on this game. Graphics Sony likes to tinker with the graphics in this game. What I like in particular is that the Minor League stadiums got a huge background overhaul and some of them look totally different than they did in previous MLB The Show games and it's a plus as they look more like where some of the stadiums take place. Some of the player sprites also got a bit of an overhaul as well with new animations, especially fitting to a specific MLB team. '''Grade: '''A Music MLB The Show always has a different soundtrack with each game, and most of the time it isn't really good and this is kind of one of those times. Though, as usual you can use any song you may have on hand, though it's best if it's from a CD. '''Grade: '''D+ Sounds/Voice The sounds of the game remain the same as they did in previous installments, bat cracks, crowd sounds and whatnot. As are the voices, along with Matt Vasgersian and Dan Pleisak, former MLB Player Mark DeRosa replaces Harold Reynolds in the commentator booth. Which in my opinion is a big minus, I kind of liked Reynolds talking as sounds the most enthusiastic out of the 2. '''Grade: '''C- Gameplay/Controls The gameplay of all of the modes, remain mostly the same as they did with previous installments. Road to The Show however got a major facelift, gone are the days where you can just buy training points and use them on your player and can get to the bigs in no time. In this edition, RTTS uses RPG style leveling up and depending on how you do in games decides what attributes get leveled up (or down), and there are caps as well, so also gone are the days where your player can have a 99 rating on all attributes, to compensate, your player can also do certain workout regiments to raise their attribute caps or quickly level up a certain attribute. Playing in games in general, the one thing I noticed is that the pitcher AI is a bit smarter, unlike in MLB The Shwo 16 or 17 where you can make the pitcher just throw one pitch and all in the strike zone, the pitcher can do a bit of a better job mixing up pitches, but it isn't overly difficult like in the installments before '16. There are also rain delays which can have an effect on a pitcher (especially if the pitcher is doing well). The controls are also the same as in the previous editions, and you can also change some of them at any time. '''Grade: '''B+ Replay Value Like in previous editions of MLB The Show, you can collect baseball cards as well as some equipment for your RTTS player, and there are a lot of game modes to choose from. In most of the standard modes (excluding retro mode) there are new features such as a real-time home run replay where (just like in a real life baseball game on television) you can watch a replay of a player's home run in real time. There are also more MLB legends to choose from (including the great "Babe" Ruth). '''Grade: '''A+ Final Thoughts This edition has taken some steps forward, and some steps back. So, the game pretty much balanced those steps out. Yes, it's more difficult to get into the bigs in RTTS now, but at least you get a better feel of an actual baseball game in this edition. Though, it's a video game and video games don't have to follow the laws of physics to a tee. '''Overall Grade: '''C